Withdrawal

Emerging seventeen miles high

into pristine azure silence that

prickles my skin with

icy splinters of lucidity.

Deafening absence of sound

and I'm creeping upside down on

the arching reaching stretching dome of

the sky like an insect

I kick a hole in a pane and through

the shattered and falling pieces

my hand releases

my clutching desperate grip on the very edge.

edge…

edge...

And sleepdrift-swimming into the eternal chasm of space

smiling in drowsy farewell, my eyes close, and

I dive, a silvery shimmer of flashing scales,

into leagues of cobalt repose.

Frank H. Weeden

2002